Privacy Policy

Last Updated Date: October 13, 2013

Renaissance Learning, Inc. (“Renaissance”) provides this Privacy Policy to inform you of our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information we receive from users of www.subtext.com (the “Site”) and our application for mobile devices and tablet computers (the “Application”). This Privacy Policy applies only to information that you provide to us through the Site and Application. This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on the Site or via the Application. You are advised to consult this policy regularly for any changes. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Subtext Terms of Service, accessible at www.subtext.com/tos.

As used in this policy, the terms “using” and “processing” information include using cookies on a computer, subjecting the information to statistical or other analysis and using or handling information in any way, including, but not limited to collecting, storing, evaluating, modifying, deleting, using, combining, disclosing and transferring information within our organization or among our affiliates within the United States or internationally.

Information Collection and Use

Our primary goals in collecting information are to provide and improve our Site and Application, services, features and content (together, the “Service”) and to enable users to enjoy and easily navigate the Site and Application.

Children’s Personal Information

If you are a minor under the age of 13 (“Student”), you may only use this Service and disclose personally identifiable information with your parent or guardian’s express consent and as instructed to do so by your school educator. We knowingly collect only limited personally identifiable information from such Students, including name, email address, and profile photograph (“Children’s Personal Information”). We require schools, school districts, and/or educators to obtain parental consent from their Students’ parents before collecting any such Children’s Personal Information in order to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. If you are under the age of 13, please do not send any Children’s Personal Information about yourself to us unless you are using the Service as instructed to do so by your school teacher, and other than what we request from you when you sign up for the Service. In the event that we learn that we have collected Children’s Personal Information from a Student without parental consent being obtained by his or her school, school district, and/or educator, or if we learn that a Student has provided us Children’s Personal Information beyond what we request when he or she signs up for the Service, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a Student may have provided us Children’s Personal Information beyond what is requested when signing up for the Service, or that a student’s school, school district, or educator has not obtained parental consent, please contact us at support@subtext.com.

Hereinafter, references to “Personal Information” shall apply to personal information of individual Service users who are not student registrants. References to “Children’s Personal Information” shall only apply to personal information of users of the Service under the age of 13. General references to “information” shall apply to all users.

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, if you are a Student registrant and your parent has signed up for the Service, you understand that your parents and educators may be able view all information within or associated with your Service account, including without limitation messages between you and your educator and grades you received on assignments.

Personally Identifiable Information.

In the course of using the Service, we may ask you to provide us with, or grant us access to, or permission to obtain, certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you; personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to, your name, email address, and profile photograph (“Personal Information”).

We collect Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information in connection with your registration to join our Service. You can register to join via the Site or Application by logging into your online account with certain third party service providers (each such account, a “Third Party Account”) via our Site or Application. Such third party service providers may include but are not limited to Facebook and Google. When you register by logging into a Third Party Account via our Site or Application, we may obtain the Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information you have provided to the Third Party Account (such as your “real” name, profile picture, email address and other information you make publicly available via the applicable Third Party Account) and use that information to create your Subtext account (“Account”) and you will become a Member; the information we obtain may depend on the privacy settings you have with the Third Party Account.

We also collect the other information that you provide as part of registration and your use of the Service (e.g., without limitation, favorite books, number of notes added via the Service, number of invitations sent via the Service, number of friends using the Service and individual preferences) (“Non-Identifying Information”).

We use your Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information (in some cases, in conjunction with your Non-Identifying Information) mainly to provide the Service, complete your transactions, if any, and administer your inquiries.

Certain Non-Identifying Information would be considered a part of your Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information if it were combined with other identifiers (for example, combining your zip code with your street address) in a way that enables you to be identified. But the same pieces of information are considered Non-Identifying Information when they are taken alone or combined only with other non-identifying information (for example, your viewing preferences). We may combine your Personal Information with Non-Identifying Information and aggregate it with information collected from other Subtext Users (defined below) to attempt to provide you with a better experience, to improve the quality and value of the Service and to analyze and understand how our Site, Application and Service are used. We may also use the combined information without aggregating it to serve you specifically, for instance to deliver a product to you according to your preferences or restrictions.

We also use your Personal Information to contact you with our newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to receive such communications from us, please follow the unsubscribe instructions provided in any of the communications. (See “Changing or Deleting Information” below.)

Promotions. From time to time, we may provide you with the opportunity to participate in contests or sweepstakes (any of these a “Promotion”) via our Service. If you participate in a Promotion, we will request certain Personal Information from you. We use the Personal Information you provide to us in these instances to administer your participation in the Promotion. Participation in a Promotion is completely voluntary, and you, therefore, have a choice whether or not to disclose this information.

Log Data. When you visit the Site and Application, whether as a Member or a non-Member just browsing (any of these, a “Subtext User”), our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website (“Log Data”). This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, your computer’s or mobile device’s MAC and hardware model, browser type or the webpage you were visiting before you came to our Site and Application, pages of our Site and Application that you visit, the time spent on those pages, information you search for on our Site and Application, number and types of products you purchase, number of feeds you subscribe to, number of invitations you send and how many are accepted, access times and dates, and other statistics. We use this information to monitor and analyze use of the Site and Application and the Service and for the Site and Application’s technical administration, to increase our Site and Application’s functionality and user-friendliness, and to better tailor the Site and Application to our visitors’ needs. For example, some of this information is collected so that when you visit the Site and Application again, it will recognize you and may serve advertisements and other information appropriate to your interests. We also use this information to verify that visitors to the Site and Application meet the criteria required to process their requests. We do not treat Log Data as Personal Information or Children’s Personal Information or use it in association with other Personal Information or Children’s Personal Information, though we may aggregate, analyze and evaluate such information for the same purposes as stated above regarding other Non-Identifying Information.

Cookies

Like many websites, we use “cookies” to collect information, but not Children’s Personal Information. A cookie is a small data file that we transfer to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes. We use cookies for two purposes. First, we utilize persistent cookies to save your login information for future logins to the Site. Second, we utilize session ID cookies to enable certain features of the Site, to better understand how you interact with the Site and to monitor aggregate usage by Subtext Users and web traffic routing on the Site. Unlike persistent cookies, session cookies are deleted from your computer when you log off from the Site and Service and then close your browser. Third party advertisers on the Site may also place or read cookies on your browser. You can instruct your browser, by changing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use all portions of the Application or all functionality of the Service.

Web Beacons

We also use “web beacons,” “pixel tags,” “clear GIFs” or similar means (individually or collectively “Web Beacons”) on our Site. A Web Beacon is an electronic image, often a single pixel, embedded on web pages. Web Beacons are ordinarily not visible to users. Web Beacons allow us to count the number of users who have visited certain pages of the Site and Application, to deliver branded services and to generate statistics about how our Site and Application used.

Inviting Friends to Use the Service

As part of the Service, a Member may invite friends to join the Service through use of the Member’s Account. Where a Member has selected the option of adding one or more email addresses to an online form, the message the Member creates may be sent by Renaissance on such Member’s behalf to such e-mail addresses or Renaissance may add such message to an e-mail in such Member’s own e-mail application for the Member to send on his or her own. These email addresses will be will be used only for the purpose of sending the email communication to the addressee.

Phishing

Identity theft and the practice currently known as “phishing” are of great concern to Renaissance. Safeguarding information to help protect you from identity theft is a top priority. We do not and will not, at any time, request your credit card information, login information, or national identification numbers in a non-secure or unsolicited e-mail or telephone communication. For more information about phishing, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website.

Information Sharing and Disclosure

We neither rent nor sell your Personal Information or Children’s Personal Information to anyone. However, we share your Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information in personally identifiable form as described below.

Subtext Users. When you register through the Site and Application and submit your Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information to create a profile, Subtext Users may be able to see your name, the contents of your bookshelf and your ratings and reading status related thereto. You can choose what other Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information you provide as part of your profile and in some cases you can choose whether to share that information publicly on the Site and Application by making selections via the “Account Settings” section of the Site and Application, except that educators and parents may be able to access any and all information about their Students. Providing additional profile information is voluntary and should correlate with the degree of interaction you want to have with Subtext Users. We recommend that you guard your anonymity and sensitive information. Please note that if you use the same mobile device or computer tablet as another Member, Renaissance will associate the data, including personal information that Renaissance collects or obtains about you with the data, including personal information that Renaissance collects or obtains about such other Member, and we may analyze and collect this data for analytical purposes.

Aggregate Information and Non-Identifying Information. We may share and otherwise disclose aggregated information that does not include Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information and Non-Identifying Information and Log Data with third parties for industry analysis, demographic profiling, certain related retail services and advertising provided on the Site and Application, and other purposes. Any aggregated information shared in these contexts will not contain your Personal Information.

Third Party On-Line Services. As a Member, you may link your Account with certain Third Party Accounts. In these instances, with your permission and on your behalf, we will share your Account information with the applicable online service for the Third Party Account. Other than what we may share with the applicable third party online service in connection with your linking of accounts, the Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information the applicable third party online service has about you is obtained by the third party online service independent of our Service. Such online service providers follow different rules regarding the use or disclosure of the Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information you submit to them. We encourage you to read the privacy policies or statements of the other services you use before you provide personal information to such third parties. Additionally, the Site and Application may access (i) your e-mail address book associated with a Third Party Account (e.g., your Gmail account) and (ii) your contacts list stored on your mobile device or tablet computer solely for purposes of identifying and informing you of those contacts who have also registered to use the Subtext Service. You will have the option to deactivate your connection to Third Party Accounts via the “Account Settings” section of the Site and Application. If you deactivate the connection to a Third Party Account, Renaissance will delete all information received from such Third Party Account except that your username and profile picture will remain on your Subtext profile.

Service Providers. We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service, to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Site and Application-related services (e.g., without limitation, maintenance services, database management, web analytics, DRM management, and improvement of the Site and Application’s features) or to assist us in analyzing how our Site, Application and Service are used. These third parties have access to your Personal Information or Children’s Personal Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.

Compliance with Laws and Law Enforcement. Renaissance cooperates with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including but not limited to subpoenas), to protect the property and rights of Renaissance or a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, unethical or legally actionable activity.

Business Transfers. Renaissance may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of its assets, including your Personal Information and Children’s Personal Information, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets or in the event of bankruptcy.

Changing or Deleting Your Information

If you would like us to delete your account in our system, you may do so automatically under the “Settings” menu in the Service. You may also contact us at support@subtext.com with a request that we delete your Personal Information or Children’s Personal Information from our database. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to honor your request. However, the notes you submit when you interact with the Subtext Service will remain stored with Renaissance and viewable through the Subtext Service, and the username associated with your deleted Account will remain associated with such notes and viewable through the Subtext Service. Additionally, we may retain an archived copy of records we have about you as required by law or for legitimate business purposes.

Security

Renaissance is very concerned with safeguarding your information. We are not in the business of providing information security. We do employ limited data security measures, such as encryption, on some but not all systems. Do not provide your personal information if you are concerned with its disclosure.

We will make any legally required disclosures of any breach of the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your unencrypted electronically stored “personal data” (as defined in applicable state statutes on security breach notification) to you via email or conspicuous posting on this Site and Application in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, insofar as consistent with (i) the legitimate needs of law enforcement or (ii) any measures necessary to determine the scope of the breach and restore the reasonable integrity of the data system.

International Transfer

Your information may be transferred to—and maintained on—computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your jurisdiction. If you are located outside the United States and choose to provide information to us, Renaissance transfers Personal Information or Children’s Personal Information to the United States and processes it there. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

Links to Other Websites and Services

Our Site and Application contain links to other websites, online services or applications (collectively, “Third Party Services”). If you click on a link to a Third Party Service, you will be directed to that third party’s website, online service or application. The fact that we link to a Third Party Service is not an endorsement, authorization or representation of our affiliation with that third party, nor is it an endorsement of their privacy or information security policies or practices. We do not exercise control over Third Party Services. Such Third Party Services may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you. Other websites, online services and applications follow different rules regarding the use or disclosure of the personal information you submit to them. We encourage you to read the privacy policies or statements of the other Third Party Services you visit.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at support@subtext.com or at Renaissance Learning, PO Box 8036, Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54495-8036.